You can smell the history

Originally sent on 18th September

Goooooooooood eeeeeeevening sportsfans, here we go again!

As i have been predicting this season so far - Rangers come to Tynecastle with Hearts still the runaway league leaders with a perfect 21 points from 7 games and the champions trailing by a load of points - 8 to be precise. Lose this one and Rangers are toast ( will Hearts drop 11 points this season, i dunno about that. Will we drop 11 points more than Rangers after a victory next week - no chance! )
Have you ever seen a league table look so good? Didn't think so

The table at the foot of this mail here is just a wee bit behind the times as Celtic have just left Easter Road with a 1 - 0 victory stolen from the young Hibs team.
So Celtic sit on 16 points 5 behind the mighty Jambos.
The pundits are going bananas over here, continually arguing about Hearts pedigree, abilities, potential, staying power etc etc etc in short Can Hearts win the league? In general the answer is No they can't win the league! ( the vast majority of these punters are ex old firm players ofcourse so what would you expect ) but the fact that the question is being asked is what is important. I suspect a number of these punters will change their stance if the Jam Tarts give a weak Rangers side a hounding next week. Already the bookies have cut Hearts from 250 - 1 down to 5 - 1, lowest odds a Hearts team has had of winning the league since March 98!

Rudi Skacel has now scored 7 goals in 7 games this season!!! The last time a Hearts side has won their opening 7 games of a season was the famous 1914 - 15 chamionship winning side that was famously dismantled to allow the entire team to sign up for the 1st world war effort, thereby foregoing the beconing glory. I don't know about you Garry but i don't know too much about all that stuff - the monument at Haymarket and Hearts special relationship with rememberance day etc. Craig Levein as Hearts manager got in to a lot of trouble with the SPL for refusing to play a game on rememberance sunday a couple of years back? As long as this run goes tho the more you can feel the weight of decades of history already pressing heavily, i hope only on us poor supporters and not on the team.

Last week a rudimentary dismantling of Livingston 1 - 4, now looking like a first division side and for sure taking the drop this season. This will unfortunately probably be the end for them. Livi land has just not really taken to having their own team, so the support is just not there and the team has terrible financial problems. The game at livingstons stadium last week had 6,200 Hearts supporters and about 1,500 Livingston. What now for what used to MeadowBank Thistle, a return to the old Commonwealth stadium and their 2,000 diehards in Edinburgh well who cares! This is about Hearts, nothing else matters.
We were camping down in a rain soaked Peebles yesterday as i listened to the game up at Inverness.
The puntidry before hand had already dismissed this game as a contest and concentrated on Hearts potential as champions, as i said earlier most pundits thought no but then when pressed to see who they would have in the Hearts team from either of the old firm, we still ended up with 7 Hearts players 2 Celtic and 2 Rangers, interesting indeed.
Dismissing the game was a mistake. This was allways a potential banana skin!
Hearts got off to a blistering start showing the kind of steamrollering we have become accustomed to ( and what we are all desperate to see next week against Rangers. Rangers will play 5 in midfield and 1 up bet ya ) Inverness could not live with Hearts for the opening 20 minutes or so but eventually they hauled themselves into the game, brought Hearts down to their level and the game became really scrappy, it was wet and windy and easily the biggest test yet of this Hearts campaign. Neither team looked like doing anything but the most important thing for me was - once again, even with the radio, which normally makes a square ball across the half way line sound like a ferocious shot skiffing the bar, I never once felt in the least bit nervous of us losing a goal never mind the game. Singing "our defence is as strong as the old castle rock...... H E A R T S".
Always in control Hearts continued to press gaining a number of corners towards the end of the first half, one was not cleared well and so fell to Skacel who took a touch then dispatched a clinical finish, par for the course for the lad. That was about the last possitive contribution he made tho as this one definitely goes into the category of "the mark of a championship team is one that can grind out a victory when they are not playing well". That statement is all good and well but it is too early in the season to be using it for me!

So the 100% record is still there and Rangers come calling next week, watch this space. Rangers are also deep in the throws of their champions league exploits which is all the better for us, they have a game before and after the lunchtime game next Saturday. It is me and Claire this time and time for me to witness first hand a win against Rangers since the cup final in 98 and for Claire the first time ever!
Another Tynecastle party? i think so...............

How has your team be doing, must be close to that end of season shindig you have up in Ottowa ( is it ? ). Wish i was over there now! I (just) seem to have just recovered from those knocks, strains and niggles i had when i was over and am finally enjoying my football again.
How is the rest of the crew?